typography

Traditionally, Hebrew printed typography doesn't have a notion of ‘italic’, a concept linked with the evolution of the Latin alphabet. Hebrew, however, when written by hand used cursive forms taught at schools simultaneously from when children start to read, the informal style hasn’t integrated into printed typography. Michal Sahar proposes a cursive Hebrew for continuous text.

From the single-style, monolingual fonts of the metal-type era to the complex, sprawling, multi-script families of the digital present, typography and type design have evolved, not only to embrace developments in print and communication technology, but also to support a world where unity and diversity must meet if we are to survive.

Peter Biľak speaks with Mark Thomson about his beginnings, running a type foundry, magazines, print media in general, modern dance and typography. This interview appeared in Eye magazine No.75, Spring 2010 in the Reputations series.

Two years after releasing History, Peter Bilak reflects on the process of creating this skeletal system in which different styles are imposed on a Roman capital base. Previous experiments are mentioned, as well as inspiration sources for the typeface.

What do we mean by the term typography? Before starting any discussion it is useful to clarify the terminology and definition of the word. This is a first from the regular columns that Peter Bilak writes for online version of the Swedish magazine CAP & Design.

This article is intended for an audience of contemporary designers and students who are at least one step removed from mid-century British typographic culture; it is a critique of the Gill Sans typeface and the idiosyncrasies of its creation from a contemporary perspective. The central argument is that an earlier typeface by Eric Gill’s mentor, Edward Johnston, is a superior piece of type design.

Interview conducted by Luciano Perondi and Silvia Sfligiotti discussing issues of translation, languages, teaching, writing, organizing exhibitions, and having no answer to question about parallels between design and science.

This article is partly based on the research for the exhibition on Czech and Slovak typeface design that we co-curated with Alan Záruba in 2004-2006 focusing on the last twenty years of typography development. The exhibition entitled 'Experiment And Typography' was first presented at the Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno in 2004 and later travelled to Prague, The Hague, Bratislava, Cieszyn, Ljubljana, Warsaw and Budapest.

As a teacher of type design and typography I have always wished for a book which I could recommend to my students without hesitation, and so I was excited to receive Karen Cheng’s Designing Type. As the author remarks in her introduction, there are simply very few books that explain the type design process comprehensively.

The art director of Collins describes the process of designing the new set of dictionaries, their history, layout and choice of type. Due to the scale at which a dictionary’s content is expressed and the particular way in which the content is read, microtypographic decisions have an unusually large effect.

Rudy VanderLans talks with Peter Biľak about the Typotheque founder’s education, design practice and experience as an ex-pat Slovak living in the Netherlands. Dot Dot Dot is discussed, as well as the typefaces Biľak has produced and his current teaching practice.

An epistemology of the word ‘experimental’ as it applies to design and type, contrasted with its scientific connotations. Examples of past and current design, type and reading/language, as well as scientific experiment, are taken into account.

Max Bruinsma (who declares he has no printer, just a Zip drive) calls for greater attention to be paid to type on screen, is echoed by Matthew Carter, with a brief discussion of screen text technology and its place in reading today (or then).

A talking Barbie lush as a foil for the Mac’s Speech functions; debates about the value of capital letters; Derrida, Saussure and Foucault; Oliver Sachs and Chaucer are all considered in this theoretical piece about the state of typography in new media.

In the early 1990s Steven Heller takes on the word ugly as he sees it applied to graphic design and design education. En route, his views of art history, pop culture and recent design trends are considered in his essay about style and meaning in design.

Design errors in academic design curricula, the 2000 presidential ballot and aviation and nuclear accidents are considered, the concept of human error is called into question, and a call for human-centered design for the fallible user is put forward in this discussion from 2001.

Lars Müller is taken to task for his religious reverence for and faith in the omnipresent Helvetica, and the book he produced which is described as a sort of universalist, modernist gospel but several decades misplaced. What one might come away with from the book and review is the possibility that type preferences are simply individualistic... so what does it matter anyway?

Emily King’s contents (part two of ten) for her dissertation for the V&A/RCA M.A. Course in the History of Design. The dissertation focuses on the relationship between graphic design and film in the middle of the past century.